


there are times we live for someone else

by jiangweiwei



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Denial, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Constipation, Feelings Realization, Fluff, M/M, Mild Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Pining Lance (Voltron), Stranded, cosmo is there too, keith's guide to surviving on an alien planet, listen, oblivious dorks, there's a lot of pining, trapped together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiangweiwei/pseuds/jiangweiwei
Summary: Things aren't looking good for Lance and Keith: they're stuck on an alien planet out of range of their friends, the only Lion they have is badly damaged, Lance is injured, and worst of all, they're falling in love.or: my excuse for domestic survival fluff
Relationships: Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 22





	1. we have jetpacks for a reason

**Author's Note:**

> this is actually dedicated to my sister! enjoy the story.

“There are at least seventeen ways this could’ve gone better,” Keith snarks, breath coming quickly. “I’m counting them right now, you moron.”

“Shut up,” Lance demands, but there’s exhaustion seeping into his voice and it comes out with less force than he intended. He holds one arm clutched tightly to his stomach, shivering with pain. “Jesus, that hurts like a motherfucker.”

“Idiot.”

“ _Enough_ , already.”

Keith attempts to pull Lance's arm away. “Let me look at it.”

“It _hurts_.”

“I know, I know. Don’t be such a baby.”

Lance huffs, but he lets Keith pull his arm away, revealing the red stains that mar the perfect white and blue of his Paladin armor. Deliriously, he thinks it looks very patriotic, but the thought slips away as soon as Keith’s gloved fingers push the black fabric away and brush the long gash that cuts horizontally across his stomach. He hisses, “Watch it!”

“Stay still,” Keith growls back, kneeling closer. At his side, Cosmo pushes his wet nose into Lance’s palm in an attempt to calm him. The wolf’s fur is slightly matted, rough to the touch. “It could be worse, but it’s deep and you’re losing a lot of blood. Stay here.”

Lance watches Keith stalk over to the first aid kit, unable to do anything but grit his teeth against the pain, one hand absentmindedly petting Cosmo’s snout. He’s frustrated and dizzy with blood loss and anger; Keith’s grumpy bedside manner isn’t helping either.

The Black Paladin in question comes back to his side, antiseptic ready. In the flickering lights of the Black Lion’s cargo bay, he looks pretty rough himself. There’s a trickle of nearly-dried blood running down the side of his face from his wild hair, a sheen of sweat visual on his temples. In the near darkness, the scar on his cheek is even more pronounced. “This is gonna sting like hell.”

“Just do it.”

Lance swears he hears a tooth crack as Keith cleans his wound, swearing every curse word under the sun through clenched teeth. He doesn’t know how many times he’s been injured as the Red Paladin, but this is definitely the worst.

“This could’ve been avoided,” Keith says, ruthlessly pulling away pieces of armor, “if you had just listened to me.”

“Maybe I could have if you hadn’t opened the airlock,” Lance hisses, flinching when Keith yanks a little too hard on one of the straps. Cosmo nuzzles his palm like an apology for his master’s behavior.

“We have jetpacks for a reason.”

“It was _broken_.”

Keith sighs frustratedly. They fall silent for a few minutes as he uses a needle and thread to stitch the wound closed, getting ruby blood all over his fingers. He pulls out a roll of gauze, scowling fiercely at it. He continues, “I wouldn’t have even needed to open the airlock if you’d listened to me about those Retrets.”

“Just stop,” Lance grits out, flinching again. “Agh, that’s too tight.”

Though the glare he directs at Lance is near lethal, Keith loosens the bandages a fraction. He ties it quickly. “There, done. Can you stand? We need to get the comms working quickly.”

"I'm fine, help me up." With some more swearing, Lance manages to get to his feet, limping into the cockpit with Keith as a crutch.

The Black Lion is badly damaged. The display had turned emergency red some time ago, symbols flashing everywhere. Coolant is low, power is low, something’s leaking from somewhere, the antenna is out of alignment, damage to the hull—wherever they look, something is wrong.

“Shit,” Keith growls, heaving himself into the pilot chair and gripping the controls. Talking to his Lion, he murmurs, “Hey girl, I know, hang in there."

“This is bad,” Lance says, surveying the damage with a pale face. “We don’t have the parts to fix half of these.”

“We just need comms,” Keith replies. “We’ve got to get in touch with the team.”

“You’ll have to realign the antenna, then.”

“Fine. Try and repair whatever else you can.” Keith jumps to his feet, hand outstretched to Cosmo. They blip away in a flash of blue light, presumedly headed for the comms array.

“Roger roger,” Lance quips breathily, leaning heavily against the console for support. His dizziness is coming back stronger. He tries to take deep breaths, but they only make him nauseous, and he has to fight the sudden urge to throw a tantrum like one of his nephews.

“It really fucking hurts,” he says to no one. He misses Red. When Keith had pulled the airlock they’d been shot into space, colliding roughly just as the Black Lion swallowed them up. He thought he’d be able to get back into Red after they wormholed away…

Keith and Cosmo come back a few moments later. “It’s aligned. Do we have enough power?”

“Probably just enough,” Lance manages to say. He sways on the spot, vision swimming.

“Hey, are you okay?” Keith asks, putting a light hand on his shoulder. His brows are knit with worry even though just a few minutes ago he'd been calling Lance a baby.

Lance scrubs a hand down his face and shrugs his hand off. “M’fine. Let’s try and connect.”

Keith looks doubtful, but he slides back into the pilot’s chair and starts pressing buttons. “Okay, booting now.”

Words begin to scroll across the display, letters he recognizes as Altean but can’t read without the aid of a Lion. Lance leans heavily on the pilot’s chair, breath coming in quick pants through the pain as he watches Keith’s face go from concentrated to twisted.

“What?” Lance asks, a sinking feeling in his stomach, nausea rolling. “What’s wrong?”

“We’re out of range,” Keith grits out, and the blood in Lance’s veins runs cold. “The comms are working, but there’s no receiving signal.”

“We're fucked,” is all Lance manages to say before his legs give and he passes out.


	2. see? that wasn't so hard

When he wakes up, he’s laying on a cot in the small alcove of the Black Lion’s cargo bay, a blanket tossed over him haphazardly. Nearby, he can just make out the faint glow of Cosmo’s fur. At least Keith had the decency to remove the hard plates of his armor, but with his change of clothes stranded in Red, he still has to wear the soft black undersuit.

He feels like he’s been through one of those sausage-making machines in commercials, ground up into tiny bits and then shoved into a Lance shaped tube. He groans through his teeth, trying to sit up only to yelp in pain as searing pain lances through his abdomen.

Roused, Cosmo jumps to his feet, shoving his nose in Lance’s face as if checking his condition.

“Hey, don’t move yet,” Keith says from somewhere in the room, but it’s dark and the only thing Lance can see in the faint outline of the purple running lights are weird, abstract shapes. He wonders if Keith is talking to him or to the space wolf, who settles a little.

“How long was I out?” Lance rasps, at least trying to prop himself up on his elbow.

“About four hours,” Keith says, and there’s a shuffling noise as he moves closer. His face looms out of the darkness, haggard and ghostly grey. “I’ve been trying to boost the connection, but I’m no Pidge.”

“Oh god, don’t say it.”

“We’re stranded.”

“Ugh, why did you have to say it?” Lance whines, flopping onto his back and cringing in pain. “Don’t we have any painkillers?”

“It’s just an emergency kit.” Keith’s face disappears and the lights flicker back on. He must’ve been rearranging the cargo bay, because everything is in a different place. The crates have all been stacked against the wall, glowing displays announcing them as things like batteries, canned food, essentials, and even souvenirs. The cot that Keith might’ve been sitting on is pushed against the opposite wall to Lance. There’s a small collection of photos still taped to the wall behind it, but they’re too far away to make out. "There's morphine, but we should only use that when absolutely necessary."

“This sucks,” Lance mutters.

“It’ll suck a lot more if we don’t find a source of food and water.”

“Where did we land, anyway?”

“I don’t know. Right now it’s still dark out, but from what I can tell, it’s some kind of forest planet.” Keith runs a hand down his face. In the brighter lighting, it’s clear that the dark circles under his eyes aren’t just a trick of the light.

“Are you okay?” Lance asks. “You’re not looking too good.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure? Because between the three of us we probably make a whole dead person.”

“Three of us?”

“Cosmo, too.”

Keith’s eyes narrow. “I said I’m fine. Go back to sleep or something, I’m going to look around.”

“What?” Lance squawks. “Are you crazy? In the dark? Alone? On a planet that may or may not have Facehuggers or something?”

“There isn’t a lot of supplies on board, and I’ve got Cosmo,” Keith insists, checking the straps on his armor. “I need to–”

“No way,” Lance blurts, struggling to get his limbs moving. His stomach burns with pain, but he manages to get into a sitting position. Through heavy breaths, he says, “I don’t care if you’re the great Keith Kogane, Black Paladin of Voltron. Going out there alone is too dangerous.”

“I don’t need you to lecture me on reckless behavior,” Keith says, scowling, but he stops adjusting his armor.

“Let’s just get some sleep,” Lance tells him. “You can go look in the morning.”

They’re silent for a long moment, during which Keith’s scowl only deepens. He looks like he’s just sucked on a lemon when he finally says, “Fine. First thing in the morning.”

Letting out a long breath of relief, Lance attempts a smile. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“Just be quiet, Lance.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

* * *

Lance is still asleep when Keith slips out at dawn, dagger in hand. He whispers to Cosmo, asking him to wait by the Lion in case anything happens. Outside the Black Lion, the light of two suns is just breaking over the horizon. They landed in the middle of a dense forest, carving out a crater in the soil and sending splintered wood everywhere. It’s quiet, almost unnaturally so, and the thought that there might not be any birds leaves Keith wondering what kind of predator patrols the skies.

He hikes into the forest, boots shining with the dew from the underbrush, trying to listen for the telltale sound of water. This isn’t the first time he’s been stranded, having to rely upon the wilderness for survival. It _is_ his first time stranded with Lance.

Unwittingly, he remembers the slash across his teammate’s stomach. Despite what he’d told Lance, it was pretty ugly. They had enough medical supplies on the Lion that he wasn’t in danger of infection, but it could be worsened very easily. Straining it all would be a bad idea, but under the circumstances, Keith didn’t know if they could afford time to heal.

His ears prick and he quickly glances around, something nagging at the edge of his consciousness that warned him of danger. He’d said something about it once. Lance and Pidge called it his spidey-sense, but it isn’t anything so kind as that; it’s the instinct honed by a child that grew up bouncing from foster home to foster home, learning to take care of himself because no one else would.

There. Keith’s eyes lock on the source of a small noise, razoring in on several small, green eyes. Something like a cross between a spider and a bird, as horrific as that sounds, crouches in the trees, mandibles clicking together noiselessly. Enormous, powerful claws spring from each of its six legs, ideal for digging into the thick bark of the trees. With a glance, Keith can tell that if he hadn’t sensed it, it would’ve killed him in an instant, and he would’ve fallen silently on a strange planet.

_Okay_ , he thinks to himself. _That’s one thing to watch out for._

Caught, the spider-bird stirs, still eerily quiet as it draws its limbs together, making to spring for him. It launches from the tree with a hollow, scraping sound, sending shards of wood everywhere.

Keith ducks, time slowing and adrenaline coursing as it does whenever he fights. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, lagging just a step behind his rhythm as he rolls to his feet, sword flashing as he yanks it from the scabbard with practiced ease.

The spider-bird lands deceptively lightly on the ground, not wasting a single second before spinning around and lunging again, two talons outstretched. Still, it makes almost no noise.

Keith dodges to the side, bringing the blade up in hopes of catching the creature with the sharp end, but it bounces off the hard shell of the spider-bird with a resounding clack, the loudest sound in the forest.

The spider-bird wheels angrily, mandibles moving quickly. It switches tactics, leaping back into the high trees, moving in a circle above Keith’s head. Sometimes it swings down on a low-hanging branch, swiping with its talons, sometimes its mandibles. Sometimes it completely forgoes the next tree and jumps clear over to the other side of the circle.

Heart pounding wildly, Keith defends, knowing there’s a feral grin on his face but unable to spare the concentration to turn it off. The Galra blood in him, the blood that’s always itching for a fight, is singing.

The spider-bird swings down for another guerilla attack, but Keith leaps up at just the right moment, swinging hard with his blade, and this time he connects with soft flesh instead of hard shell.

For the first time, the spider-bird produces a high pitched screech, one so quiet it was almost indistinguishable from the blood rushing in his ears or the crunch of fallen leaves as his boots hit the ground. Abandoning the trees, it rushes him in a rage, leaping forward with all six talons outstretched.

Keith drops to his knees, sword rising before he even tells his limbs to move, and then the blade is sinking into something wet, soft, and the roar that echoes around the clearing is his, but it’s his victory, because his sword is buried up to the hilt through a crack in the spider-bird’s shell.

It dies quickly, thrashing for only a few moments before going suddenly, terribly still and falling back onto the ground.

Keith kneels there for a full minute, breathing hard. His armor is covered in spider-bird blood, a viscous green, and it drips into the grass with his sweat as he tries to catch his breath.

“Gross,” he finally says to the still forest. His motivation to find any body of water rises.

Keith hauls himself to his feet, muscles already beginning to feel sore. He glances back at the spider-bird, briefly wondering if it’s okay to eat before a wave of disgust banishes the thought.

He hikes for another half hour through dense underbrush, thankfully not coming across any more of those spider-birds, before he hears water. His footsteps speed up, ready to wash the disgusting blood off his armor, as the sound grows louder and louder until it reaches an almost deafening pitch.

The trees break. Keith stands in awe at the edge of a cliff, watching an enormous waterfall thunder to a lake below, water shimmering in an amazing range of colors as the twin suns strike at two different angles. The lake glitters with the same rainbow, a river branching off to the east. He sees ripples where aquatic creatures brush the surface, disturbing the calm waters near the shore and away from the waterfall. It’s perfect.

Keith breathes out slowly. This land is untouched by any civilization, just pure, raw beauty in its most natural form. He’d craved this kind of sight since leaving the desert, that beautiful, harsh landscape. This was no desert, but it wasn’t the sand that had attracted him there.

Well, he won’t be able to wash off in a waterfall, and the cliff is too risky to scale. Making a note of the coordinates in case he gets lost, Keith turns and begins the long hike back to the Black Lion.


End file.
